ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Personality Disorders
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1411587
This article is part of the Research TopicRising Stars in Psychiatry: 2024View all 12 articles
Psychological, Social Factors, and Smoking Behavior Mediated the Effects of Cannabis Use on Personality Disorders: A Mendelian Randomization Study
Provisionally accepted
- 1Chengdu Second People's Hospital, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China
- 2Guang'anmen Hospital, Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, Beijing, Beijing, China
- 3Yangtze University, Jingzhou, China
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Background: Rapid changes in attitudes, legality, and patterns of cannabis use (CU) underscore the importance of understanding its impact on mental health. Although links between CU and personality disorders (PDs) are documented, their causality remains uncertain.Methods: Employing Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS) data, this study investigated the causal relationship between cannabis use disorder (CUD) and lifetime cannabis use (LCU) with 9 types of PD risk through Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis. The primary method was the inverse variance weighted (IVW) method, supplemented by multivariable MR to assess direct effects independent of mental, social, and substance use factors, and mediation MR to explore mediating factors.Results: Corrections for the false discovery rate revealed significant causal associations between CUD and an increased risk of emotionally unstable PD (EUPD; ORIVW = 1.228, 95% CI 1.069–1.411), overall PD (ORIVW = 1.186, 95% CI 1.065–1.321), and schizoid PD (SPD; ORIVW = 1.644, 95% CI 1.131–2.390). Mediation analysis identified schizophrenia (SCZ), major depressive disorder (MDD), neuroticism, and smoking initiation (SmkInit) as shared mediating factors between CUD and both EUPD and overall PD, with an additional mediating factor, household income (HI), specific to the CUD-to-overall PD pathway. In contrast, no mediating factors were found between CUD and SPD. Notably, a bidirectional causal relationship was observed between overall PD and CUD (ORIVW = 1.399, 95% CI 1.033–1.895). Suggestive evidence indicated a causal link between lifetime cannabis use (LCU) and overall PD risk (ORIVW = 1.074, 95% CI 1.008–1.146).Conclusion: This study offers new insights into the potential impact of CU on the development and progression of various PDs, laying the groundwork for targeted interventions to mitigate its effects on mental health. Keywords: Cannabis use; Mendelian Randomization; Personality disorder; Causality; Mental disease
Keywords: Cannabis use, Mendelian randomization, personality disorder, causality, Mental disease
Received: 03 Apr 2024; Accepted: 25 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ni, Li, Tang, Zhang and Feng. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Youqian Zhang, Yangtze University, Jingzhou, China
Yanyan Feng, Chengdu Second People's Hospital, Chengdu, 610017, Sichuan Province, China
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